Laptop Hunter Commercials Are Stupid [Mac Versus PC]

by David Risley on Jul 24, 2009 | 51 comments

Many of you have probably seen the commercials. Some young person wants a laptop with a 17” screen, bunch of memory, bunch of power, and they don’t want to spend more than $1,000. They look at the Apple laptops and conclude it is too expensive. So, they go buy some cheap PC for $699 and go skipping down the yellow brick road. Its the stuff dreams are made of.

Here’s the thing: You cannot get such a laptop from Apple for under $1,000. They just don’t build it. So, why make the comparison?

It’d be like Chevy doing a commercial which starts with a person who wants a Lexus with all the bells and whistles for under $15K. Its just not going to happen.

Why? The TARGET MARKETS ARE DIFFERENT.

With the $1,000+ PC market, Apple has a staggering 91% market share, according to an NPD report. Put another way, people looking for “cream of the crop” computers simply don’t buy PCs. 9 out of every 10 dollars goes to Apple. They’re willing to pay.

I have wondered out loud why Apple doesn’t build and offer a mid-grade tower computer, a “Mac Pro Lite”. Since then, however, I realized that Apple just isn’t going to bother any time soon. It isn’t their target market. It would dilute the brand. Lexus and Acura don’t go out and try to compete with Chevy. In the same vein, Apple isn’t going to try to compete with HP and other budget brands of PC.

If Apple ever released such a machine, it would sell like crazy and increase Apple’s overall market share substantially. But, its clear they not only don’t care, they have no need to care. Apple is making gobs of money by targeting high-quality, high-margin machines.

The Laptop Hunter commercials are just pressing market buttons in a down economy. The truth is that people who buy PCs with price as a primary determination are just not going to consider Apple. People who are more willing to pay, however, will flock to Apple. About 91% of them.

If you want a bargain, you’ll use Windows. If you are happy to pay for a premium computer, you’ll be happy to spend more money and buy a Mac.

Again, its a Chevy compared to a Lexus or a Porche. And, yes, a Chevy has pros and cons, as does the Lexus or Porche. Pros and cons aside, they cater to different markets.

Like what you read?

If so, please join over 28,000 people who receive our exclusive weekly newsletter and computer tips, and get FREE COPIES of 5 eBooks we created, as our gift to you for subscribing. Just enter your name and email below:

If you enjoyed this article, you might also like...

Post A Comment Using Facebook

Ernest N. Wilcox Jr.
I think you missed the point of these commercials. When the top-of-the-line- PC was powered by a 486 processor, there was a genuine difference in quality between a MAC and a PC. Today, the difference still exists, but is far less visible to the end user. Since the MAC switched to using the Intel processors, the difference between a MAC and a PC has diminished greatly. Today, the primary difference is that the MAC tightly controls on what hardware it’s OS will run via licensing (it refuses to recognize hardware not licensed for usw on a MAC system) while a PC remains an open architecture (any one can develop hardware for use on a PC), so OS developers have much less control when it comes to hardware compatibility. If you choose quality components, your PC can be every bit as good as a MAC and at a considerably lower price. In my mind, this means that you get what you pay for in the PC world, but you can get the best bang for your buck as well.

http://kkomp.com Sharron Field
I’m wondering whether Dave might have recently signed an affiliate contract with Apple perchance?
obinna
i agree with enerst on this one. you can get a high end, high powered pc in the pc world
obinna
i agree with ernest on this one. you can get a high end, high powered pc in the pc world
Kevin
You hit it spot on, Mr. Wilcox.

David K.
So a Mac guy writes an article bashing a PC commercial??? What a surprise! Not like those Mac commercials playing on the old PC image are genius…
That’s EXACTLY the point of the commercial. MACs are more expensive than PCs. And if you don’t want to pay top dollar for a computer, then you’re not going to find a MAC in your price range. And you’ve nailed it exactly, MACs are more expensive. So…what exactly was the point of your article again? Oh yeah, to try to bash PCs. *sigh*
I started reading pcmech because of some unique, informative, quick technology reads it provided. Seems lately it’s instead become a pulpit for personal agendas. Which is your right. However, at this rate, I won’t be reading much longer.
Jerome B.
Cream of the crop? So a mac can do what a PC can’t do for a higher price? Riiiight! Your comparison of cars is wrong to. Those commercials point out that you can get the same spec’d PC for a lower price. Apple is targeting anyone willing to pay the price of their overly priced product. If they don’t want to deal with the new customer base they would get if they lowered their prices what does that say about them? Are the water fountains at their facility made of gold? Do you have to bow down when Steve Jobs walks by? Apple has a good product but so do other companies. It’s all about the cool factor. The economy has shown that Apple is over priced for what you get. It didn’t take a commercial to show that. Now your playing the numbers game like it proves anything except apple hasn’t dramatically lowered their prices. Of course they have the market for PCs over a $1000. Thats because no one its buying $1000 XP variants. They can get them cheaper! It’s like saying more rich people are buying Lamborghini’s over middle class. Dah!

Chunk
It comes down to long term costs. Sure you can buy a computer for a lower price. What will it cost you in frustration once it goes down due to a hardware conflict or a bad update or a virus? What will it cost when you have to change your graphics card just to get the new operating system? The car analogy way is off. The Apple is not a Lexus. More like a Toyota, even though Lexus is the prestige line of Toyota. Compare a Camry and an Impala or Malibu. The GM cars WILL have more failures down the line. Every manufacturer has is flaws, bad apples, pattern failures. It’s just a matter of which company has done more to reduce those problems in the future. You need to look further down the road.

http://www.tictechto.com Vijay
I am intending to get a Mac soon. A MacBookPro infact.
I will only know if it is worth every penny when I try it see their service level. A little expensive but if it one of the most stable system and wih very little crashes, why not!

http://www.menga.net Rich Menga
Very good point. Service is fine, however this does NOT include in-home or at-business service. If you want in-home/at-business service calls, you have to go Lenovo or Dell. With Apple, you have to ship out the Macbook or go to the Apple Store – even with AppleCare. Kinda sucky considering the extra you pay for it.

Ru
And considering that Microsoft doesn’t make computers it’s also another reason to wonder why these ads continually focus on hardware rather than software. It’s not MS’s market either. Plus after four or five ads now they’re losing their flavor. It’s the same equation recycled without any new information or anything interesting to say.
I put together my own PC’s, but we can’t piece together laptops, so we’re pretty much stuck with what manufacturers present us, or what’s available on refurbs. I do have a small issue with the hunter ads, because I’ve bought a few computers because the “bones” were more appealing; it looked good and had the specs that I needed. Adding more memory now or a bigger hard drive later is not a big deal since these components were made for upgrading. Sacrificing an ATI or Nvidia GPU video card to suffer with an Intel is a deal breaker. I bet that some of these Hunter ad people did as such. And if that’s the case, then MS is putting inexperienced people in front of a camera to tell us how to choose a laptop. It’s funny since experienced techies who thoroughly reviewed it, damaged the Vista brand. I guess they must have went through a few of those experienced people to find the right hunter ad equation.
A Rich
I am in the market for a laptop & was considering Apple – until I saw pieces of the casing of my friend’s nice little white thing, less than a year old, fall off. This closed the book as far as quality (control) is concerned, apart from other niggling issues like some incompatibilities in Word documents across platforms. Sorry, no chance my money going the Apple way. It will be another good old HP.

http://www.menga.net Rich Menga
In defense of Apple (something I very rarely do because I’m not an Apple user), the white Macbook is the “cheap” notebook from Apple. The Macbook Pro on the other hand has better QC, no question. But it will cost you an extra $200 more to get it.

Vege
from a non-techie/regular consumer-who-still-knows-enough-about-computers perspective: so i understand now, pay $1k+ for your “special” mac, but if you want one that won’t fall apart within a year you have to pay another $200? this is so total apple psychology – buy me because i look cool and make you feel like you’re cool. seriously peeps, a computer does *not* make you cool. it is precisely a vehicle for what you want out of life. apple may have cornered the ‘cool’ people market but the rest of us are content to see a computer for what it really is: just another piece of electronic gadgetry that will soon be obsolete. thus, we are happy to get a ‘deal’ on a pc which has all the specs we need.

David Risley
You miss the pointed. The point is that there are different target markets involved. Apple does not even bother to target low-price points. Yes, there are good quality PCs out there at high price points, but because Apple specifically targets those people and does it well, that is why Apple wins 91% of the business for people willing to spend over a grand on their computer.

David K.
Just stop the MAC inferiority complex.
Microsoft has deserved some criticism for poor commercials in the past, certainly. But these commercials are obviously targeting the value shoppers, not the premium shoppers. So the commercials are “stupid” because the target market is difference? In your haste to go PC bashing, YOU have missed the point.
Then you go on to speculate about that 91% number. Do premium shoppers go for MACs? Maybe, but that number hardly proves it. You have your MAC disciples who HAVE to buy in that segment, since that’s all there is. The number of quality PCs to be had below $1000 continues to increase. Thus, the PC market is scaling cheaper. The only ones who NEED to spend more than that are the hard core games. Hardly a significant segment of the market. But that segment continues to prefer PCs, for what it’s worth.
Perhaps the market is different. But this is yet another case of the statistics meaning whatever you want it to mean.
Mr 7
People who spend over $1000 on a pre-assembled computer don’t really know what they want anyway. Why weren’t custom computers considered in your comparison? Look at gaming computers, and every custom computer built in that budget. What do they run? That’s right, PC architecture. Yes, I hate the commercials too, but I think you missed the point and instead turned it into a “Mac is better than PC” column. The correct answer is, both Mac and Microsoft are full of idiots.

David M
Stating that 91% of the sales for laptops over $1000 are for Macintoshes is not painting an accurate picture of the facts, especially when the field for the statistics was limited to US retail store sales. This means that most of the sales from Dell and other internet retailers was ignored..and this segment of computer sales is huge. Seriously, how many of you would buy a laptop from a brick and mortar store when online prices are so much better?
If someone really wants to put it in perspective, Apple has less than a 4% market share of the entire worldwide computer market. Perhaps its because the rest of the world (rightfully?) perceives Macintoshes as overpriced for what you get?
These stats are nothing for Mac users to brag about. They don’t paint an accurate picture plus it does not say a lot for people who overpay for a laptop, that for some is nothing more than a status symbol. BMW gets away with selling their overpriced cars using the same psychology.
Greg
David, you are pissed about these Microsoft commercials that make low blows to Apple, but you don’t care about the low blows Apple takes at Microsoft? I’m just saying it seems one sided.
http://www.slideshare.net/gregory2009/gregory-halama-pictures-of-michael-jackson gregory ceig
this people just really want to get noticed that’s why sometimes they’re stupid enough to make things mixed up
http://pcrestoration.blogspot.com Robert Plumer
I agree with Dave’s analogy automotive analogy. Another thing Apple does well is to create brand marketing and an image. You also get the whole package buying a MAC from hardware design to software. This is where they have an advantage over Microsoft. Microsoft has to be built to work(or vice versa) with many manufacturers designs and hardware. I sometimes wonder if Windows haters realize that Microsoft is at heart a software company and does not build the PC’s they run on. This almost gives Apple an unfair advantage. Microsoft doesn’t care what price PC’s are sold at(as long as they get there fair share). I believe it’s up to the manufacturers(Dell, HP, Lenova, Toshiba and so on) of PC’s to sell there high end PC’s. To me the blame should fall more on them rather than Microsoft.
James
Your point is well taken with regards to there being two different markets being targeted.
However, I don’t understand the business mentality that says, ‘we’re content with our tiny market share and our huge profits, while allowing the 800 lb gorilla to continuously rip off our best functionalities.’
Clearly, in this business, the profit is in the software, not in making the computer. With that in mind, I don’t understand why Apple doesn’t license the Dell’s of the world to make their ‘Mac Pro Lite’ with components and specifications dictated by Apple. This would be the only way for them to make a dent in the Enterprise market and significantly increase their market share.
It would also seem like Apple could take a page from Microsoft’s playbook and do a better job defending their software features (intellectual property) from. . .well. . Microsoft.
Cody
I agree with you. The commercials are stupid. Guy walks in with $1700. Saves $1000 for on a cheap laptop. What you don’t see is when the guy gets home and starts cursing at Vista because it won’t connect to his internet and he gets BSOD on the first day and gets a virus while installing SP2. Now, I don’t know about you buy after all that trouble I would just have gotten a Mac. Plus you get a free I-Pod right now.
If I had to get Windows I would get me a M17x for that price.

http://www.twitter.com/AndrewPearce Drew
BSOD? Virus when installing SP2? Uhhh, exaggerate much?

DOS_equis
Yeah I think Cody is a Mac fanboy who has hung out in the Apple clubhouse in his mom’s basement a little too long. BSOD??? Sure anyone can get A BSOD or something similar. MAC’s can have a kernel panic which is the same thing. Virus installing SP2??? Yeah maybe if you got it through Pirate Bay or something like that. I’m completely happy as a Windows user EXCEPT the high prices of the OS in retail form. That has always bugged me.

http://bilgiyarismasi.blog.com bilgi yarismasi
I think you missed the point of these commercials.
http://jerseymarket.co.uk/ Think Twice (Buy Local)
It’s important to keep the various target markets (and demographic groups) in mind – David’s point is good, although perhaps easily misinterpreted.
Of course there are great PCs – the one I’m using now is pretty hot – but the majority of users, en-masse – do not buy or build them. The gaming community do, so do developers and other techies – but these groups are outnumbered by the folk who just have a ‘computer at home’ – normally for the web, homework, etc – and also by the other ‘premium’ market – the Apple Mac one.
A low-cost Apple would be a bit like a really cheap Lexus or Mercedes. It’s not gonna happen – they’re comfortable targetting high spend per head customers in (relatively) smaller volumes, and it’s profitable because there are less folks trying to cut in for a share of the market.

A Rich
Cheap luxury analogy? Suckers’ paradise? But it has already happened – you might care to take a look at my comment, July 25, and Chris Menga’s reply (July 27).

http://howto-ubuntu.com eli
I agree^^^.
I also think there’s no problem with Apple being happy with it’s niche in the market. Why expand?? There’s absolutely no reason to try to become the 800lb gorilla of this industry. I think it’s pretty well bbeen proven that your average end user probably won’t let that happen. If they’re making a profit, who cares if they don’t have complete market domination on their agenda.
Vic
Since when do you do comparison shopping on price alone? Saying that Apple has 91% of the $1000 laptop market doesn’t say anything about what you’re buying, except that it’s $1000. If a MS run laptop has all the specs of an Apple $1000 laptop for $700, you betcha’ Apple will remain king of its fools market.
I think Microsoft has finally come up with a strong counter attack to Apple’s condescending ads which should ultimately play in the hands of Apple consumers when Apple cuts its margin on entry level laptop.
For my part, I’ve had Macs, I have an iPhone and a $3K+ home built gaming pc… I’ve had problems with all of them and enjoy all of them… hardware and software is all it is, all else is expensive marketing yak.
josh
this is pcmec a site about building pcs why even talk about a mac. If he wants to talk about a unix based os why not linux which is a pc and mac os
http://www.tictechto.com Vijay
PC = Personal Computer
A mac is a Personal Computer, aint it?
So any PC’s can be discussed here.
Steven Hammons
First of all, Lexus and Acura are rebranded products of Toyota and Honda respectively to circumvent export quotas outlined by United States in trade policy. Since Macs are not rebranded and are not an imported product to the best of my knowledge, the car to Apple analogy just does not work here.
It’s not the OS or the company that produces the OS that creates a divide among the two main computer consumer demographic groups, it is the two consumer demographic groups. But one group stirs the pot more than the other and we can see that from a stylistic perspective by the way you wrote your article which can support the theory there are two types of people in the world with regards to choice of computers; one group dons rose colored glasses and aristocratically touts that their flatulent air does not stink while thumbing their noses at the other group who are much less pretentious, if at all, and who are just as happy with their budget computer despite not having the income to afford the computer that the other group has. Don’t we have enough discrimination in the United States today without adding class based discrimination centered on personal computer choice into the fold?
The one thing that can be said from an objective perspective is that Apple has a better marketing campaign than Microsoft. Period.

jess
I believe everyone has missed the two main points, if you don’t have the money for a mac and if you have the mental endurance to run linux, you can have the best of both worlds- safety/reliability and affordability by building on your own a computer at a good price with good parts made by yourself that’s running Linux (Fedora, Ubuntu…etc). Virus free, safe and wallet friendly. Capitalism works only when there is competition, and since apple and microsoft don’t seem to want to compete on each others turf, I would be happy to donate 20 bucks for linux, even though it’s free. I could go on and on, for apple, why do I need to pay 300 bucks more just to get a laptop that has keys that light up at night, don’t the rich mac people have lights in their houses? What’s that, graphics capabilities are better on a Mac, oh please, ever heard of Nvidia, ATI? Ok, the LED backlit displays on your laptops are pretty, and I thank you guys for pushing the envelope in those areas and many others, but LED displays are coming to new laptops and desktop dislays as well, albeit behind apple, but they’re coming and they are cheaper. And as for Microsoft, ugghhh. Terrible security or lack there of, terrible reliability or lack there of, not too mention my windows mobile phone stalls and freezes and has to be rebooted, I’ve never had to reboot a NOKIA or MOTOROLA, NEVER!!!! AAAAAHHHH!!!!! Bad Microsoft, bad boy, stay, and fix your operating system so that a person can never get a virus on their desktop computer first. I can’t wait before I get my first virus on my phone (that includes adaware, malware, popups etc… I work on computers for a living, and anything that you didn’t intend to be downloaded or installed that does something on your computer you didn’t want to do is a virus, and to the people who make them, thanks for giving me job security, but if I find one of you I would send you to Saudi Arabia and tell them you are an infadel so you can be publicly perminently punished). Sorry if that was harsh, I tried to keep it PG. In short, build your own desktop or barebones laptop and put Linux on it.
jess
I do like those mac adds, they make sense and are hillarious, microsoft with all it’s money couldn’t even pay Jerry Seinfeld and make a joke, how poetic.

Kelly
It is obvious that many, if not most of the PC users that get riled up about these articles haven’t actually used a Mac; and, aren’t really qualified to state that one is better than the other.
I agree with you that each platform has pros and cons.
Using the Mac OS is a completely different experience and workflow than using Windows.
I use and like both Windows and Mac for different reasons. They really are different animals, and can’t be compared on hardware specs alone. The truth is, a MacBook with 2 GB of RAM and a 2 GHz Duo Core will out-perform a similar PC notebook because the OS (OS X) is designed differently, and is snappy.
I think that people should try to be more objective, and less religious about the comparisons.
I laugh when I read articles on some tech websites that falsely assume that Apple wants the same market-share as Microsoft, or that Apple wants to take over the enterprise. I don’t see that happening; nor, do I think Apple cares.
Apple is a niche product… and probably always will be.
I think a more suitable comparison would be that Apple computers are more like a BMW, people pay more for the better handling, and better overall driving experience. That doesn’t mean that you can’t buy a really good Ford or Chevy, it just means that the overall experience of owning and using the product is different.

jess
I second kelly’s analogy, mac=bmw, windows=chevy. Very apt, don’t forget Linux=dune buggy+monster truck+Semi truck, looks be damned, first and foremost I want to go anywhere and do anyhing and run over anything and carry the biggest load I want to carry, especially if I’m paying for it, my money goes to those who give me more options not less. With linux, I am in total control, I can haul your bmw and chevy anywhere with my semi, drop you off in the middle of the desert, run you over with my monster truck, then hop in my dune buggy and ride off into the sunset. So macs say they can use more than one finger on your touch pad, I can use more than one button on my mouse. Your bmw looks prettier, less maintenence? I’ll give you that one, but I can paint my dune buggy and put plastic on it, try compiz fusion and change your wallpaper (http://lifehacker.com/5068294/beautifully-minimalist-conky-setup), I can make Ubuntu look like a mac, windows, or anything in between. I like being in total control of my hardware and software. No windows restrictions, take for instance the hair brained idea that people only can use letters A-Z for drive letters, why not numbers or words? Why even think of having a restriction on something like that? What is the thought process that makes a person think, I need a way to restrict the number of drives a person can use on their computer? Doesn’t doing things like this make the operating system more complex and unnecesarrily unstable? Yeppers. Do most people who only need a chevy care, nope, but I like to have the option, no boundries, if I want a whole boat load of iso’s mounted as well as many different partitions for data, backups, movies, music, why have a limit at all? It’s like a samari warrior taking two steps forward, then a side step, then a step back, then a step forward, then another side step back again, then swing the sword to chop his enemy in half, that’s rediculous, the samari will take the two steps to get to you then swing immidiately when he’s in range, so as not to leave room for you to chop him in half, no wasted motion. I might go so far as to say Vista was designed to be slow so you would have to buy a newer computer. Why do you think they made windows 7, it’s not a new operating system, it’s windows xp with mac looks without the vista side steps added in. They had to do something to not loose one point to go down to 98% market share.

Elfman
91% of what market. I have worked in the mechanical engineering arena for years on high end computers and have never touched a MAC. Apple pissed off the engineering software community many years ago and the to this day you cannot get high or even mid range CAD/CAE software for the MAC. It just doesn’t exist. So, 91% of what market? You make it sound like it is 91% of the entire PC market, which I will contend is full of crap and if your looking at specific little niches I still don’t care what niche you look at, there is no way they hold 91% market share.
jess
I second kelly’s analogy, mac=bmw, windows=chevy. Very apt, don’t forget Linux=dune buggy+monster truck+Semi truck, looks be damned, first and foremost I want to go anywhere and do anyhing and run over anything and carry the biggest load I want to carry, especially if I’m paying for it, my money goes to those who give me more options not less. With linux, I am in total control, I can haul your bmw and chevy anywhere with my semi, drop you off in the middle of the desert, run you over with my monster truck, then hop in my dune buggy and ride off into the sunset. So macs say they can use more than one finger on your touch pad, I can use more than one button on my mouse. Your bmw looks prettier, less maintenence? I’ll give you that one, but I can paint my dune buggy and put plastic on it, try compiz fusion and change your wallpaper (http://lifehacker.com/5068294/beautifully-minimalist-conky-setup), I can make Ubuntu look like a mac, windows, or anything in between. I like being in total control of my hardware and software. No windows restrictions, take for instance the hair brained idea that people only can use letters A-Z for drive letters, why not numbers or words? Why even think of having a restriction on something like that? What is the thought process that makes a person think, I need a way to restrict the number of drives a person can use on their computer? Doesn’t doing things like this make the operating system more complex and unnecesarrily unstable? Yeppers. Do most people who only need a chevy care, nope, but I like to have the option, no boundries, if I want a whole boat load of iso’s mounted as well as many different partitions for data, backups, movies, music, why have a limit at all? It’s like a samari warrior taking two steps forward, then a side step, then a step back, then a step forward, then another side step back again, then swing the sword to chop his enemy in half, that’s rediculous, the samari will take the two steps to get to you then swing immidiately when he’s in range, so as not to leave room for you to chop him in half, no wasted motion. I might go so far as to say Vista was designed to be slow so you would have to buy a newer computer. Why do you think they made windows 7, it’s not a new operating system, it’s windows xp with mac looks without the vista side steps added in.
jess
didn’t mean to double post, I was posting this on a windows machine that I’m currently fixing,…waiting for updates and the virus scan to complete, and the browser froze while typing, I hit reply the second time when it came back, sigh It even chopped off the last sentance, “They had to do something to not loose one point to go down to 98% market share.” how apt.
Chuck
Ah, the wonders of innumeracy!